


Bus Driver

by Shatterpath



Series: Ordinary People [1]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Gen, Inspired by Real Events, Missing Scene, POV Second Person
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-10-20
Updated: 2016-10-20
Packaged: 2018-08-23 15:16:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 974
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8332501
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Shatterpath/pseuds/Shatterpath
Summary: What happens when the ordinary people of National City get caught up in superhero shenanigans? You, the bus driver, thought this was going to just be another day on the job.





	

**Author's Note:**

> So, my brain's been nagging me about this idea and I finally got it going today. Haven't we all wondered how the ordinary citizen feels about living in a comic book? Here's my take on that.
> 
> Up first is yours truly. For a year and a half I was a county bus driver in Washington State, shuttling commuters back and forth to Seattle from the next county north. A move took me away from the work, but it left a lasting impression. And how often does a writer actually get to write something close to the bone? Not me!
> 
> Oh, and the story about the fire truck ladder? Actually happened and was told to me during training. The story about the board on the freeway? Actually happened to me.
> 
> Written in about two and half hours the morning of 10-20-16.

Hearing the stories and living through one turns out to be two very different things. Your friends and family thought you were crazy to become a bus driver. The silly things are huge! The people are rude! Isn't sitting in National City's hideous traffic in a car bad enough? Why would you want to do it behind the wheel of a stinking fishbowl of a _bus_?

Well, for one thing, the money is amazing. Though there are days when no amount of money makes the chaos worth it.

One of those days is a Thursday afternoon with surprisingly light traffic for 3:32 PM. You've been assigned one of the better of the fleet's many sixty-foot articulated buses, since you have to drive your commuters all the way out to Riverside before calling it a day. You've wound the huge vehicle through downtown with an ease that would have once terrified you and now whirr along in quiet, air-conditioned comfort for your passengers who just want to get home with minimal drama.

However, this will not be a peaceful drive today.

Even as you suck in a hard breath, feet shifting to the brake and hands tightening on the big steering wheel, your synapses go into overdrive. There's a story for every scenario from birdstrike taking out the windshield to a fire truck losing a ladder on the freeway that took out all of the compressed air lines beneath the bus and left the driver with no brakes. Your trainers gleefully told you all of them, both out of a sense of perversity and to soften any potential shocks. Hell, you'll never forget that twenty foot board flipping end over end out of the back of a contractor's truck that you swore was going to come through the window at your head. And yes, the stories did help keep you calm.

But the trainers could have never come up with this one.

You caught sight of her once, after all your route passes pretty close to Catco Tower and she seems to be there a lot, a flash of blue and red that whipped around the skyscraper like a missile. Those enormous windshields make for terrific viewing to be sure. But seeing that slim, muscled frame slam down into a crouch-- shattered concrete billowing out like fog-- not three hundred yards ahead of you?

That was a visual you could do without, no matter how dramatically that blonde hair and crimson cape billows around.

In slow motion, your foot is on the brake, every instinct screaming to slam it down violently, but you absolutely _cannot_. Even, steady pressure is your goal here because there are some fifty unprotected passengers enclosed in the bus' fifteen ton frame and you need them to stay generally in their seats and the articulated bend in the center of the bus to stay as straight as possible. Even at low speeds, a bus is hell of an effective hammer. At freeway speeds with cars all around? You could probably do as much damage as Supergirl herself.

The screaming starts up the instant the drag of the brakes shudders through the massive frame and the shriek of rubber and air brakes is a terrifying harmony to human voices. Terror is a ball of ice in your gut as the bus crouches low and smoke billows up, three passengers sliding forward to bash into the nose of the vehicle beside you. There's an impact far back along the bus' sixty-foot length as cars are beginning to lose control around you.

This is not going to end well.

Then Supergirl whips a high-speed glance over her shoulder and you actually _see_ her eyes narrow before she looks up and catches something comically large and jagged. She bows under its weight before there's a blast of road debris and she lifts away.

The windshield shatters and metal screams as it shears away and the bus… the bus shudders to a halt, tilting drunkenly into the crater left behind by the resident superhero. The articulated joint is at a sloppy 140 degree angle and the dogpile of passengers to your right is groaning, but slamming down the parking brake button and twisting to cast a wild look around the interior of your bus… you are stunned to see that everyone seems to be in one piece.

Later, when the adrenaline stops making you shake like a junkie and everyone has been moved to safety, you'll learn that the incongruous glare of sunlight above you was from Supergirl's feet and a corner of the explosion debris she'd retrieved ripping open the roof over your head. You'll get stitches for the split in your scalp you never felt and have a broken thumb put in a splint and stare at a multitude of bruises, some of which you never will be able to explain. The police will take a statement, as will your dispatch office and the city, county and state sends representatives and reporters get in your business and even Catco magazine hounds you into doing an interview. 

But all that really matters to you is that no one on your bus died. Oh sure, there were broken bones, lacerations and one bashed skull that resulted in a very long hospital stay, not to mention more therapy than one busload of people should ever need, _but no one died_.

It's what lets you sleep at night, lets you do some soul searching that leads you back to your job months later, lets you climb in behind that oversized steering wheel. No one died and you can still do your job, can still watch through that big windshield for a streak of blue and red that lets you know that National City's guardian is still out there.

If she can do it, then so can you.


End file.
